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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27918673">Keep the Light On</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Angels_Heap/pseuds/Angels_Heap'>Angels_Heap</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Disco Elysium (Video Game)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Addiction recovery, Angst, Depression, Eventual Happy Ending, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, jeangst</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-20 11:42:32</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>12,523</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27918673</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Angels_Heap/pseuds/Angels_Heap</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>After nearly five years spent covering for Harry Du Bois while slowly losing his grip on his own sanity, Jean Vicquemare is used to his poor decisions coming back to haunt him. What he doesn't expect is for one of them to stick around long enough to defy the odds and succeed where he has always failed.</p><p>He's not sure where that leaves him.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Harry Du Bois &amp; Kim Kitsuragi, Harry Du Bois/Jean Vicquemare, Kim Kitsuragi &amp; Jean Vicquemare</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>44</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. April '51</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Long after the rest of C-wing had gone home for the night, a lone, brooding figure wandered the nearly empty halls of Station 41. Lieutenant Jean Vicquemare’s shoulders were draped in a patrol cloak and his face was frozen in its usual semi-permanent scowl as he made his way from room to room, slamming doors and swearing under his breath as he went.</p><p>He hadn’t meant to snap at Judit. Truly, he hadn’t. It had just… slipped out, and he deeply regretted how they’d spent the long drive back from Grand Couron in uncomfortable silence, heavy with misplaced resentment.</p><p>Rationally, Jean knew it wasn’t Judit’s fault their witness interviews had run so late, nor was she to blame for the fact that the whole ordeal had left them no closer to narrowing down a list of suspects. It wasn’t her fault that they’d needed a Human Can Opener when she was, at best, a flimsy kitchen knife with only two years of experience under her belt.</p><p>It wasn’t her fault that she’d gotten saddled with him as a partner.</p><p>Jean ran a hand down his face and sighed. He’d meant to apologize before dropping her off at home, but the words simply hadn’t come until long after she’d stormed out of his motor carriage and retreated to the relative safety of her apartment without a backwards glance.</p><p>He’d had every intention of driving straight home after that, but his fading instinct for self-preservation had come through at the last minute and changed his course. He knew it was safer to clear his head at the station than to sequester himself in his shitty apartment, where the illusion of privacy meant that one drink or one cigarette could turn into another, and then another, and then another…</p><p>Precinct 41 already had one substance-addled human disaster. It couldn’t afford to gain another one.</p><p>Heavy footsteps echoed in the empty stairwell as Jean trudged towards the fourth-floor balcony, one hand loosely gripping the rickety handrail while the other fished a crumpled pack of Astras out of his coat pocket. Upon reaching the landing, he elbowed the door open without breaking stride, took in a deep breath of chilly, crisp evening air, reached for a smoke…</p><p>And froze.</p><p>A split second too late, he registered that he wasn’t alone. Although his eyes had not yet adjusted to the sudden near-darkness, there was no mistaking the orange bomber jacket-clad figure nursing a cigarette at the opposite end of the balcony.</p><p>Jean cringed as the door slammed shut behind him with a heavy <em>thud</em>, dashing his fleeting hopes of escaping unnoticed. Lieutenant Kitsuragi didn’t even flinch. He glanced over his shoulder and stared blankly at Jean for a couple of seconds before slowly turning back around and raising his cigarette to his lips. </p><p><em>Fucking hell, </em>Jean mentally cursed. This was just his luck, wasn’t it?</p><p>Seeing as it had been nearly a full week since Kitsuragi had officially transferred to Precinct 41, it was actually something of a miracle that Jean had managed to avoid a run-in with him for as long as he had. Still, he’d hoped to have more time to get his shit together before their inevitable confrontation.</p><p>It was too late for that now. There was nowhere to run.</p><p>Jean took a deep breath to gather his resolve, squared his shoulders, and made his way over to the far edge of the balcony that overlooked Central Jamrock. “Lieutenant,” he greeted with a terse nod, even though the ideal window for empty pleasantries had long since closed.</p><p>Kitsuragi acknowledged the greeting with a matching nod. “Satellite-Officer.” If he noticed how Jean flinched at the title, he didn’t let on.</p><p>Jean leaned against the railing and drank in the view as he slipped a cigarette out of the pack in his hand and returned the rest of the smokes to his coat pocket. The evening was clear enough that he could just barely make out the glow of Boogie Street at the far edge of the city.</p><p>If he hadn’t known better, he might’ve thought it was beautiful.</p><p>Without taking his eyes off of Main Street, he reached for his lighter. He slowly traced a path back towards the station, drawn towards the towering, crumbling gray apartment complex at the corner of Main and Perdition. It stared back at him with a hundred vacant eyes—some glowing a dull, sickly yellow, others already dead to the world.</p><p>Jean placed the cigarette between his lips and flicked the lighter with trembling fingers. The action produced nothing more than a series of weak, mocking clicks.</p><p>Out of juice. Of <em>fucking</em> course.</p><p>A sudden flash of orange in Jean’s peripheral vision reminded him that he had an audience. The beginnings of a dramatic, frustrated groan caught in his throat and came out sounding more like a grunt. He cast a furtive glance in the direction of the movement, blinked in surprise, and grabbed a lighter from Kitsuragi’s outstretched hand.</p><p>“Thanks,” he mumbled. He dipped the cigarette towards the lighter’s flame, inhaled, and then shoved the device back into its owner’s gloved palm as if it was cursed, or perhaps rigged to explode.</p><p>He closed his eyes, just for a second, to savor the rush of nicotine flooding his system. One by one, his muscles started to relax, and his pounding headache began to fade to a dull throb.</p><p>Jean’s subsequent long exhale brought with it an observation that he had not intended to verbalize. “Didn’t know you smoked.”</p><p>His memories of his first encounter with Kitsuragi were more than a little fuzzy, but he was virtually certain that he would’ve recalled the smell or taste of tobacco, had it been present.</p><p>It would have disqualified him, after all.</p><p>“I usually have one at night while I go over my notes,” the lieutenant explained. His notes, of course, were nowhere to be seen, but all that mattered to Jean in the moment was the implication that this habit pre-dated Kitsuragi’s involvement with the shitkid.</p><p>It was an established ritual, not a new destructive coping mechanism. He could respect that.</p><p>As the minutes dragged on in silence, Jean stole a couple more glances at Kitsuragi out of the corner of his eye and reluctantly allowed himself to consider the possibility that he had spent the better part of a month giving himself a new ulcer for <em>nothing.</em></p><p>Not so much as a flicker of recognition had crossed the lieutenant’s features when they’d first crossed paths in the hostel cafeteria, and Jean knew better than to chalk that up to the effectiveness of his intentionally shitty disguise.</p><p>Looking back, he was forced to conclude that either the man truly didn’t remember him, or he had the best poker face in all of Elysium.</p><p>And now, even though a deserted balcony in the middle of the night was the perfect setting for the dressing-down Jean had been dreading ever since Pryce had authorized Kitsuragi’s transfer, the lieutenant had not yet seized that opportunity. Jean couldn’t help but wonder why.</p><p>Perhaps the lieutenant was simply too soft-spoken to take him to task for his unprofessional behavior, or at the very least, he intended to wait until he’d settled in at the precinct before making waves. </p><p><em>Or maybe, </em>Jean’s bitter inner voice chimed in, <em>he understands where you were coming from now that </em>he’s <em>the one with a front row seat to watch your brain-damaged partner circle the drain.</em></p><p><em>Ex-</em>partner, Jean mentally corrected himself. Ex-<em>something, </em>anyway.</p><p>He raised his cigarette to his lips again and let the last of his reservations dissipate like smoke. If the lieutenant wasn’t actually out to get him, then their chance encounter could very well prove to be a blessing in disguise.</p><p>He was running out of time to test that theory. Kitsuragi was nearly finished with his cigarette. </p><p>In an effort to feign nonchalance, Jean faced his companion and rested his arm on the top rung of the safety railing as he casually asked, “So, how is he?”</p><p>The lieutenant’s already ramrod-straight posture stiffened. Slowly, he extinguished his cigarette on the nearest rail and turned towards Jean, his expression wary. He didn’t say a single word, but Jean could only assume that he was trying to gauge whether or not he could trust him not to use information about Harry’s condition against him.</p><p>That was not a good sign, and somehow, Kitsuragi’s silent scrutiny hurt even more than the lecture Jean had initially expected. He took a long drag from his cigarette and exhaled, in hopes that the smoke would obscure the way his face burned with regret as he recalled his dismissive treatment of Harry in Martinaise.</p><p>He hadn’t believed the amnesia story at first… and then he hadn’t <em>wanted</em> to believe it… and then it had been too late. The damage had been done.</p><p>“I’m off the clock,” Jean clarified, in an effort to put the other man at ease. “I’m only asking as a…”</p><p>The lieutenant arched a brow, presumably daring him to try to finish that sentence without choking on his own hypocrisy, even though he had to know damn well that he <em>couldn’t.</em></p><p>“We were partners for nearly five years,” Jean amended, after a short pause. Despite his best efforts to keep his emotions in check, a note of desperation crept into his voice. “The fucking avalanche of medical leave paperwork on my desk tells me he’s still <em>alive, </em>but… that’s all anyone will tell me.”</p><p>He suspected that some of his colleagues might have visited Harry, or at least asked the new lieutenant about him, but he had yet to successfully learn anything about the shitkid’s condition through non-official channels. In his mind, no news was bad news when it came to Harry; if the other officers were stonewalling him, it <em>had</em> to be for a reason.</p><p>When Kitsuragi failed to respond to his pathetic plea, Jean forced himself to look the lieutenant in the eye and found that the man's earlier caution had given way to an unexpectedly sympathetic countenance. A small wrinkle between his eyebrows also suggested confusion, or perhaps surprise.</p><p>Jean doubted he’d ever learn to reliably distinguish between each of the lieutenant’s subtle, seemingly infinite micro-expressions, but in this particular instance, he sensed that a breakthrough was imminent.</p><p>Sure enough, Kitsuragi flashed a small smile and cleared his throat. “His leg is healing. He still has a slight limp, but it’s not likely to be permanent.” He paused and made a noise that suspiciously resembled a chuckle. “I’m sure he’ll be back to Jamrock shuffling with the precinct’s finest any day now.”</p><p>He fixed Jean with a pointed stare, perhaps to remind him that Harry <em>was, </em>in fact, going to return to field work whether Jean wanted him to or not, and then continued, “We recently… tidied up his apartment and rearranged some things. He’s adjusting well to the change.”</p><p>Jean mirrored the lieutenant’s slight grimace with a deeper one of his own. He knew better than anyone that even the mere <em>sight</em> of Harry’s apartment was often enough to drive seasoned professionals to switch careers on the spot.</p><p>Literally. He’d watched it happen twice.</p><p>Although he certainly didn’t envy Kitsuragi for cleaning up that cesspit, he respected the hell out of him for it. He also couldn’t shake the feeling that he should have been there. He wasn’t sure that he trusted anyone else to find <em>all </em>of Harry’s stashes, and all it would take was one oversight…</p><p>Jean took in a sharp breath and started to ask the question that Kitsuragi had left conspicuously unanswered. “Is he…?”</p><p>The lieutenant nodded. “Yes, he’s sober. He hasn’t consumed any mind-altering substances besides antidepressants and the occasional cigarette since he left Martinaise.” He pursed his lips, as if unsure whether or not to elaborate. “He’s also seeing a therapist twice a week.”</p><p>Jean’s jaw nearly hit the floor. The news of Harry’s sustained sobriety was enough of a shock—he couldn’t recall Harry having gone more than a week without drinking or snorting something in the entire time he’d known him—but beyond that…</p><p>“How the <em>fuck</em> does he afford that much therapy?”</p><p>“We found a counselor who was willing to provide services at a discount in exchange for the opportunity to observe such an unusual case of amnesia firsthand.” With only partial success, Kitsuragi attempted to disguise another almost-laugh as a cough. “Khm. I imagine the re-allocation of his Commodore Red budget has also played a role.”</p><p>Jean raised his cigarette to his lips to hide his own smirk. “How is his memory, then?”</p><p>“His semantic memory is coming back slowly. It helps that he’s been doing a lot of reading—novels, pop culture magazines, entire volumes of the encyclopedia… anything he can get his hands on, really. His episodic memory is… spottier.” The lieutenant sighed. “His therapist has advised him against consciously trying to access memories from before his blackout. Some may return in time, but complete recovery is unlikely.”</p><p>In a truly impressive feat of self-control, Jean managed to keep his expression neutral in the face of that devastating revelation.</p><p><em>He still doesn’t remember you, </em>nagged the low, self-deprecating voice in the back of his mind.<em> And he’s not trying to.</em></p><p><em>And he probably doesn’t even </em>want<em> to.</em></p><p>Meanwhile, Kitsuragi took advantage of the conversational lull to glance at his watch. It was a quick motion, clearly intended to be subtle, but it didn’t escape Jean’s attention.</p><p>He had enough situational awareness to feel like an asshole for interrupting the lieutenant’s solitary evening ritual, pressuring him to violate Harry’s privacy, and then essentially holding him hostage in that uncomfortable position, but he still had unanswered questions.</p><p>He couldn’t afford to let Kitsuragi leave. Not yet.</p><p>Jean swallowed the lump in his throat and steeled himself for another rejection. “Has he asked about me?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>Almost as if on cue, Jean’s cigarette chose that moment to finish burning down to his fingertips. He hissed, released the smoldering stub, and stomped out the embers with considerably more force than necessary.</p><p>He looked up from the ground to find Kitsuragi staring at him intently with one eyebrow ever-so-slightly raised. He could only watch in horror as one corner of the lieutenant’s mouth quirked up into a half-smirk, almost in slow motion—a <em>knowing </em>half-smirk that all but confirmed Jean’s worst suspicions.</p><p>“So, you <em>do</em> remember,” he snapped.</p><p>It wasn’t a question. It was an accusation.</p><p>“Khm. Yes.” In the blink of an eye, Lieutenant Kitsuragi’s facial features returned to their inscrutable resting state. He didn’t seem inclined to elaborate.</p><p>Jean sharply averted his gaze and fought to keep his breathing under control as months of repressed shame rushed to the forefront of his consciousness, knocking him off-balance and ripping away the last tattered remnants of his façade of professional detachment.</p><p>Even though January—and Harry’s second-to-last catastrophic bender—now felt like a lifetime ago, Jean could still vaguely recall the not-unpleasant burn of one drink too many, or perhaps two, downed between bursts of subtext-heavy small talk at a bar two districts away…</p><p>… the pressure of a surprisingly strong gloved hand resting against his arm… surreptitiously groping his ass… grabbing hold of his tie and pulling him into a dark, spartan apartment in an unfamiliar part of town…</p><p>… those same delicate fingers, slick and bare, slowly working him open… bracing against his waist… slipping between his thighs…</p><p>… and finally, a split second of euphoria, instantly obliterated by the low growl of a name escaping his lips—two syllables, blessedly foreign to the lithe stranger draped across his back—followed by a flood of stammered apologies, barely audible over the internal roar of his self-loathing.</p><p>As if the whole situation hadn’t been mortifying enough at the time, the confirmation that the lieutenant had since pieced together the surrounding context had Jean mentally calculating his odds of surviving a jump from a fourth-floor balcony.</p><p>Over ten years in the RCM, he’d learned that roughly 50% of people who fell from a height of less than 15 meters lived to tell the tale.</p><p><em>That number is far too high,</em> argued his shitty little inner voice. <em>No zeroes after the decimal point.</em></p><p>
  <em>If you’re going to do this, do it right.</em>
</p><p>An eternity or two later, Jean managed to regain enough of his composure to assess the damage.</p><p>“Does he… know?”</p><p>The lieutenant shook his head. “No,” he replied. “Or at least, I haven’t told him, and I don’t intend to.”</p><p>It took Jean a beat to register the question hidden in Kitsuragi’s carefully crafted statement: Did <em>you </em>ever tell him? And its logical follow-up: What are the odds that he’ll connect the dots, if or when he remembers that conversation?</p><p>When Jean finally managed to face his companion again, he found that the lieutenant’s brows were creased with concern. Not for himself, he realized, but for <em>Harry, </em>because their shared, awful secret was exactly the kind of bombshell that could undermine his trust in Kitsuragi and completely derail his recovery, even if he was spared the most fucked up details.</p><p>It was Jean’s turn to shake his head, then. “I never told Harry about… that part of my life.”</p><p>How could he have, even if he’d wanted to?</p><p>
  <em>Hey, shitkid, guess what? Every time you go off the fucking rails, I take a very expensive cab a couple of towns over, get absolutely shitfaced, and then find someone who’s the complete fucking opposite of you and beg them to screw my fucking brains out so I don’t stick my gun in my mouth and blow them out instead!</em>
</p><p><em>What do you think of that, Mullen? Just </em>once,<em> can you appreciate the shit I do for you?!</em></p><p>“That’s probably for the best,” Kitsuragi replied, presumably unaware that he was delivering the understatement of the decade while Jean ventured closer than ever to the precipice of a long-overdue mental breakdown.</p><p>For a fleeting instant, some insane part of him wondered what it might feel like to confide in Kitsuragi about the handful of times Harry had come on to him while intoxicated, rough and insistent in his desperation to make reality confirm to his imagination.</p><p>He shuddered and swallowed the bile in his throat. What the fuck was he <em>thinking?</em> The guy was here to clean up his mess and probably steal his job, not to serve as his goddamn personal therapist. </p><p>Besides, Harry had never offered any indication that he remembered those lapses in judgment even <em>before </em>his amnesia, and Kitsuragi already had more than enough ammo to end Jean’s career and publicly humiliate him ten times over if he ever wanted to. No amount of temporary relief was worth digging his own grave even deeper.</p><p>“I prefer not to involve myself in my colleagues’ personal affairs, officer,” the lieutenant said, almost as if he’d read Jean’s mind. “I don’t gossip. The situation in which we’ve found ourselves is not ideal, but there is no sense dwelling on the past. I trust that this small <em>indiscretion</em> will not threaten the lieutenant-yefreitor’s recovery, nor will it negatively affect our working relationship.”</p><p>He punctuated his statement with another pointed stare, as if to emphasize that his last statement was <em>not </em>an olive branch, but rather, a warning and a reprimand rolled into one. Clearly, there was no use in pretending they both didn’t know exactly why Jean had postponed their initial briefing not once, not twice, but <em>three times </em>since Kitsuragi had officially joined Precinct 41.</p><p>Jean just barely managed to offer a terse, mute nod in response. He could admit when he’d fucked up. Not out loud, of course, but at least he was trying.</p><p>From there, he gathered what remained of his dignity and matched the intensity of the lieutenant’s stare, intent on reestablishing his authority by standing his ground until the older man blinked. He knew it was a childish game, but in his own defense, he hadn’t been the one to start it.</p><p>Much to Jean’s simultaneous apprehension and relief, the lieutenant was, in fact, the first to yield. His guarded expression softened almost imperceptibly, and then he unclasped his hands from behind his back and caught Jean off guard with another question.</p><p>“How are you coping with all of this?”</p><p>Jean barked out a mirthless laugh. “Not well,” he answered, as if that wasn’t already exceedingly obvious. He suspected the lieutenant was no longer referring to the January Incident, but his answer was the same either way.</p><p>With his heart in his throat, he held his breath and waited for Kitsuragi to say the next line of the joke, or even change the subject entirely.</p><p>However, instead of backing down, the lieutenant simply quirked an eyebrow, leaned back against the railing, crossed his arms across his chest, and waited…</p><p>… and waited…</p><p>… and waited…</p><p>… and <em>waited…</em></p><p>… until Jean finally cracked.</p><p>“He fucking… <em>died,” </em>he choked out in a broken voice.</p><p>It sounded wrong to say it out loud, but really, how else was he supposed to describe it? He’d abandoned an obviously unstable Harry in Martinaise on a Friday afternoon and by Monday morning, his partner had fucking <em>killed himself,</em> just not in a way anyone had expected.</p><p>Kitsuragi nodded sympathetically. “It’s okay to mourn him,” he murmured. With only the slightest hesitation, he uncrossed his arms, took a step closer, and gently placed a hand on Jean’s shoulder.</p><p>Almost reflexively, Jean shrugged to dislodge the other man’s hand and grit his teeth to keep himself from screaming.</p><p>“You don’t fucking get it, do you?” he growled as he balled his hands into fists at his sides and sharply turned away from his companion to survey the fading lights of the city once again. “Harry… he’s…” he faltered, searching for the right words, and then registered his mistake. “Well, he <em>was…”</em></p><p>Jean shoved his fists into his pockets and swore under his breath, having found himself at a complete and utter loss as to how to even begin to describe the unrelenting shitshow that had been the last half-decade of his life.</p><p>He closed his eyes, hoping to ground himself, and all he could see was a mountain of empty bottles… a fist aiming for his jaw… an explosion of blood and broken glass…</p><p>“It’s okay to hate him, too,” the lieutenant said softly, without a hint of judgment.</p><p>At that, Jean wanted nothing more than to lash out again—to make it abundantly clear that he didn’t need <em>Kimball </em>Kitsuragi’s pity, fuck you very much, nor did he need anyone else’s permission to feel his own goddamn feelings—but he found that he couldn’t muster up enough venom to make the rebuke sting.</p><p>Instead, he turned towards the lieutenant again and asked, before he could lose his nerve, “Why are you so hell-bent on doing this to yourself?”</p><p>Kitsuragi clasped his hands behind his back and cocked his head, silently inviting Jean to say his piece.</p><p>He didn’t need to be told twice. “You had so many fucking chances to walk away,” he hissed. “Nobody would have blamed you—you know that, right? What could you <em>possibly </em>expect to gain by transferring to this hellhole and getting involved with this… this <em>shitstorm?”</em></p><p>The way Jean saw it, this whole experiment could only end in one of two ways, and he couldn’t decide which potential outcome made him feel sicker: The seeming inevitability that Harry would force Kitsuragi to endure all the same abuses and indignities he’d hurled at Jean over the years until he, too, couldn’t get out of bed in the morning without a pharmaceutical incentive…</p><p>… or the possibly that he wouldn’t.</p><p>The lieutenant took a moment to consider the question, and then he looked Jean dead in the eyes as he answered, “Lieutenant Du Bois is a good man, Officer Vicquemare.”</p><p>Jean opened his mouth to interject and Kitsuragi silenced him with a raised finger. “He is a good man who is very, very sick… but he is <em>asking</em> for help and he is <em>accepting</em> it. I understand that you are at the end of your rope, but I am not ready to give up on him just yet.”</p><p><em>Fucking hell, </em>Jean thought, for the umpteenth time that night. Hadn’t anyone thought to tell Kitsuragi about all the times Harry had asked—hell, <em>begged—</em>for help, only to turn around a few days later and scream that not only did he not want to get better, but he wanted to get <em>worse?</em></p><p>But then again, Kitsuragi had undoubtedly encountered plenty of addicts over twenty years in the RCM. Probably worked with more than a few, too. There was no way in hell he didn’t know what he was getting into.</p><p>There had to be more to this story. This was <em>personal, </em>somehow.</p><p>“Okay, but why <em>Harry?” </em>Jean pressed. “Of all the lost causes you could’ve taken on as a little weekend pet project, why this one? You’d only known him for a fucking week before you signed your life away, so don’t try to tell me this is some kind of <em>loyalty</em> thing.”</p><p>Without missing a beat, Kitsuragi flashed a wry smile and intoned, “I assure you, officer, that my motivations are completely platonic.”</p><p>Jean sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. He’d walked right into that one. He also would’ve been lying if he said he hadn’t considered that particular angle. He hated to admit it, even to himself, but the lieutenant’s clarification had put some sick, jealous part of his mind at ease. </p><p>“Fine, fine,” he mumbled, unwilling to further dignify that last comment with a response. “But you know that raises more questions than it answers, right?”</p><p>The lieutenant sucked in a breath, visibly uncomfortable for the first time that night. He dropped his gaze, slid his glasses off the bridge of his nose, and began to clean the lenses with a white handkerchief. Jean tried not to stare, but it was hard not to notice how much older the lieutenant looked without the thick frames to distract from the tiny wrinkles pulling at the corners of his eyes. </p><p>A few moments passed before Kitsuragi replaced his glasses and slipped his handkerchief back into his jacket. “I’ve lost many colleagues to substance abuse and suicide,” he said, his voice barely audible over a sudden gust of wind. “I’m sure you have too. And I’m sure you know it’s usually… quick.”</p><p>Jean nodded and willed himself not to think about how many funerals he’d attended in the last year alone. He’d stopped bothering to have his dress uniform cleaned between them, lest he need it again before he had a chance to pick it up from the shop.</p><p>“Then you must recognize that Harry is an… anomaly,” Kitsuragi continued.</p><p><em>Harry, </em>Jean noted. Not ‘lieutenant-yefreitor.’ Not ‘Lieutenant Du Bois.’</p><p>“The fact that he has managed to keep his head above water for so long, despite the odds and his best efforts to the contrary, is a sign of incredible strength—”</p><p>“Or a masochistic streak and a superhuman liver,” Jean interjected. He didn’t even try to hide the bitterness in his voice.</p><p>Undeterred, the lieutenant pressed on. “Khm, perhaps. But I was about to say that the lieutenant-yefreitor’s longevity is also a testament to the dedication of his support network. Most officers in his position are not so lucky.” He seemed to stare both <em>at</em> and <em>through</em> Jean simultaneously, his expression heavy with silent recognition and something else Jean couldn’t quite place.</p><p>For years, Jean had made it a habit to hide or downplay the extent of his ill-advised involvement in Harry’s affairs for fear of judgment or unsavory speculation by outsiders. He wasn’t sure how to process such an unexpected affirmation from a near-stranger that he’d made the right choice in sticking by Harry… that his personal sacrifices had not been for nothing… that maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t crazy.</p><p>“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Jean said softly, after a long pause. He felt like he had more to say—an apology, for starters, or a more heartfelt expression of gratitude—but the words caught in his throat.</p><p>“See if you can find it in you to give him one more chance,” the lieutenant implored him, eyes sparkling behind thick, round lenses. “I have a feeling he will surprise you.”</p><p>Without waiting for a response, he glanced at his watch once again, picked up his discarded cigarette butt, and calmly made his way across the balcony to dispose of the object in a distant bin.  </p><p>Jean stood rooted to the spot as Kitsuragi paused in the open doorway and offered one last half-smile over his shoulder.</p><p>“Goodnight, Satellite-Officer.”</p><p>With that, he disappeared into the harsh fluorescent glow of the stairwell and left Jean alone with his thoughts.</p><p>A beat passed before he blinked away the afterimage of the light from the doorway, turned away from the sound of Kitsuragi’s retreating footsteps, and let his body sag against the freezing metal railing.</p><p>He rested both elbows on the top rung, propped his head against his hand, and let his vision go out of focus until he couldn’t make out a single familiar landmark amongst the blurry, overlapping orbs of light, just as he’d done on a hundred other nights like this.</p><p>All that was missing was Harry and his stream-of-consciousness rambling about his direct line of communication with the ‘spirit of Revachol,’ whatever the fuck that meant.</p><p>Granted, Harry had said a <em>lot </em>of crazy shit over the years, but he’d committed so hard to that particular bit that Jean had begun to suspect that it was a genuine clinical delusion and not, as he’d initially believed, Harry’s longest-running practical joke.</p><p>If that was how Harry wanted to explain his random bursts of insight, he’d often told himself, then what harm could it do to humor him, just a little? They were solving cases, and that was all that mattered.</p><p>Jean couldn’t help but crack a smile as his mind played through a highlight reel of all the times he’d reluctantly followed Harry into some random alleyway or drainage pipe or dumpster, only to find him knee-deep in gunk and triumphantly bagging a piece of evidence while quietly thanking La Revacholiere for the tip.</p><p>What were the odds, Jean wondered, that Harry would ever remember any of that? More than likely, that particular quirk had been lost forever to the same mental abyss that had swallowed nearly all of Harry’s memories of Jean, their partnership, eighteen years of police work, and his own fucking name.</p><p>Instinctively, Jean reached into his jacket for another smoke. It wasn’t until his fingers met cold metal that he remembered his empty lighter. With a disgruntled sigh, he resigned himself to fiddling with the cap and the useless sparkwheel to distract himself from the cold.</p><p>The wind was picking up, but he wasn’t quite ready to go inside yet. He wasn’t sure why.</p><p>Idly, Jean wondered what the city would say to him if it could actually speak. Would it say he was doing a good job of keeping it safe?</p><p><em>Fuck no, </em>his inner voice supplied with a scoff, <em>of course not.</em> Jean couldn't find it within himself to argue with that assessment.</p><p>The Major Crimes Unit had never been terribly effective, even in its heyday with a full staff and no 45,000 reál hole in its budget. And now, of course, Jean was only one person attempting to hold the unit together by doing the work of at least three people, all while actively pissing off his few remaining allies because he <em>still </em>couldn’t get Harry Du Bois out of his fucking head.</p><p>He was just barely managing to stay on top of the cases that actually made it to his desk. He could only imagine how many cases—how many <em>victims—</em>had fallen through the cracks without even making it that far.</p><p>“I’m trying my fucking best here, okay?” he muttered aloud. It wasn’t crazy, he reasoned, if nobody was around to hear him.</p><p>Four stories below, a bright blue, freshly re-liveried Coupris Kineema rumbled out of the station’s garage and turned sharply onto Main Street, heading south towards Perdition at a speed that Jean strongly suspected was pushing the upper limits of legality.</p><p>His fidgeting fingers stilled as he watched the Kineema’s taillights fade into the distance, presumably en route to check on Harry. Something about the sight sent a wave of confusing, conflicting emotions crashing through his body all at once: apprehension, concern, a twinge of jealousy…</p><p>But more than anything, Jean felt <em>relieved. </em>The ever-present black hole in the pit of his stomach seemed to shrink as it slowly dawned on him that for the first time in <em>years,</em> he was not the only force standing between Harry and oblivion. In fact, assuming Kitsuragi had told him the truth—and Jean had no reason to believe he hadn’t—Harry was doing just fine in spite of Jean’s complete absence from his life.</p><p>Hell, Harry was probably getting better specifically <em>because </em>he was keeping his distance.</p><p>Jean huffed an exasperated sigh and shook his head in disbelief. It seemed Harry had been right the whole goddamn time, then; all he’d really needed was for Jean and everyone else to <em>fuck off </em>and then <em>bam, </em>he’d quit everything cold turkey and started going to fucking therapy.</p><p>A well-timed, especially harsh gust of wind swept along the balcony, cutting through Jean’s patrol cloak and his thoughts like a knife through butter. With chattering teeth, he decided to take that as his cue to call it a night.</p><p>He wandered down the stairs in a daze, paused, and then turned a corner to take a quick detour through C-wing on the way to the garage.  </p><p>It didn’t take him long to locate the spare lighter in his desk drawer and swap it out for the empty one in his jacket. He felt a pang of longing and regret in his gut as his gaze swept across the cluttered, dust-covered desk opposite his.</p><p>At five weeks sober, the version of Harry that existed now was even more of a stranger than the one he had left behind on the docks in Martinaise. Any <em>sane</em> person would have found this development encouraging, or perhaps even exciting.</p><p>To Jean, it was absolutely terrifying.</p><p>Suddenly eager to be <em>anywhere</em> but the station, Jean slid the drawer shut, patted the tattered plush cockatoo perched on the corner of Harry’s desk, and made a pact with himself as he headed for the exit: If Harry managed to stay sober for the remaining three weeks of his medical leave, he’d try his best to reconnect with him upon his return—if not as a friend, then at least as a colleague.</p><p>And if he didn’t…</p><p>Jean set his mouth in a grim line and flipped the light switch next to the door, plunging all of C-wing into near-complete darkness.</p><p>Well, it wasn’t as if Kitsuragi hadn't been warned. </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Sorry folks, I can't write in second person present tense. It's just not happening. Please forgive me. This was originally supposed to be much shorter with a very different tone, but then oops, Jeangst. I may continue if the reviews aren't too scathing.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. May '51</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Alternate title: Jean Vicquemare and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Hey, Jude, do you ever feel like the 8/81 is getting longer?”</p><p>Judit turned her gaze away from the road just long enough to glance at Jean in the passenger seat. “You mean the expansion project into the southern districts? That’s been stalled for years, hasn’t it?”</p><p>“No, I mean… it’s getting longer, but in tiny, <em>tiny</em> increments. Slowly, so nobody really notices, but it’s just enough to fuck us over every single time we have to…” He trailed off and sighed. That particular inside joke far pre-dated his partnership with Judit. It was no wonder she didn’t get it. “Nevermind. Forget I said anything.”</p><p>“All right,” she said softly. “We’re almost home, anyway.”</p><p>Jean rested his head against the window and took a sip from his thermos of lukewarm convenience store coffee—his third refill, or perhaps his fourth, since his rude and abrupt awakening nearly six hours prior. The constant, unsettling vibration from the spare tire was starting to give him a headache, but given the circumstances, that was among the least of his worries.</p><p>Thanks to a malfunctioning radio and an unexpectedly sharp chunk of highway debris, their crippled motor carriage had limped into the Lausanne Central Aerodrome’s carpark just in time to watch a massive, silver-rotored airship disappear over the horizon with over two hundred souls on board—including their prime suspect in THE FACELESS MURDERS.</p><p>The cherry on top of that particular shit sundae had been their subsequent discovery that the bastard had also forged his license for inter-isolary travel. His chances of reaching Vredefort with his consciousness fully intact were slim, to say the least, and the RCM’s chances of successfully petitioning to have whatever was left of him extradited back to Revachol were virtually non-existent.</p><p>In short, they were fucked. Completely, totally, utterly <em>fucked.</em></p><p>And it wasn’t even noon yet.</p><p>As the station’s domed roof faded into view, Jean caught himself reaching for the bottle of magnesium pills he kept on his person for emergencies… and then he stopped himself.</p><p>He could get through this without wasting a pill. Really. He wasn’t that weak, and it wasn’t like this was his first colossal fuckup, nor would it be his last. Seeing as he and Judit were practically the only semi-competent officers left in C-wing, he had faith that any retribution from the higher-ups would be manageable.</p><p><em>We’ll be fine, </em>he told himself, in spite of the anxiety clawing at his insides. <em>I can fix this.</em></p><p>Jean reluctantly forced himself to sit up as Judit exited the motorway and smoothly maneuvered their motor carriage into the station’s garage. It took him a moment to muster up the energy to exit the cab. When his feet finally hit the ground, his legs were sore and stiff, but that was to be expected; for such a large vehicle, the Coupris ’40 had an awfully cramped front seat. </p><p>“Are you ready?” Judit asked when she appeared by his side a couple seconds later. She pocketed her keys with one hand and smoothed down her uniform jacket with the other.</p><p>Jean snorted. “What, for Pryce to rip both of us a new one?” He tucked his ledger under his arm and grimaced. “Yeah, sure. Might as well get this over with.”</p><p>“No, I mean…” Judit’s voice faltered and she pursed her lips as she gestured towards the sleek Kineema parked beside their boxier, shittier patrol vehicle. A faint, intermittent rumbling sound indicated that the other motor carriage’s coils were still cooling—it hadn’t been parked for long.</p><p>Jean shot his partner an exasperated look, silently begging her to cut the crap and finish her damn sentence already…</p><p>… and then it hit him.  </p><p><em>He’s baaaaack, </em>Jean’s inner voice announced, with an ominous singsong lilt. <em>Today’s the day!</em></p><p>A twisting feeling seized his gut. <em>Shit.</em> He’d completely forgotten.</p><p>With his heart in his throat, Jean answered Judit’s unspoken question with a terse nod and took off towards the stairwell at a brisk jog before he could lose his nerve.</p><p>Exactly two minutes later, he burst into C-wing with Judit hot on his heels and scanned the room. A handful of patrol officers were milling around as usual, it was too early for Heidelstam’s desk to be occupied, Kitsuragi’s jacket was draped across the back of his empty chair, and Torson and McLaine were hunched over their adjoining desks, hard at work constructing some sort of frivolous structure out of office supplies.</p><p>If not for the conspicuous absence of the pile of junk that had once covered every square inch of Harry’s desk, now situated directly opposite Kitsuragi’s, Jean might have been able to convince himself that this was just another normal day at the office.</p><p>He elected to announce his presence by loudly slamming his thermos onto his desk. The action felt strangely satisfying, but much to his annoyance, Torson and McLaine barely startled.</p><p>“Oh, hey.” McLaine held up a hand in a casual wave; Torson echoed the sentiment with a grunt. “If you’re looking for Lieutenant Four-Eyes, he’s in there.” Without taking his eyes off his precariously balanced tower of staplers, McLaine jerked a thumb in the direction of Pyrce’s office.</p><p>Jean blanched. He could practically feel Judit glaring daggers at the back of his head, waiting for him to reprimand McLaine for disrespecting a superior officer, but the burn of her disapproval hardly registered. If Kitsuragi was talking to the Captain, then where was…?</p><p>“Haven’t seen Captain Sober since this morning,” Torson supplied, before Jean had a chance to ask. “I guess he’s outside?” He shrugged and reached for a roll of sellotape. “Unless Kitsuragi <em>lost </em>him or something.”</p><p>McLaine smirked. “How much you wanna bet he ditched us, Mack? Took one look at this shithole and decided to fuck off for good?”</p><p>“I’m calling it now—he faked his own death,” Torson chimed in. He nodded approvingly at his partner and grinned. “Yeah, my money’s on that, seeing as we all know he learned from the <em>master…”</em></p><p>Heavy-duty plastic groaned under Jean’s fingertips as his death grip on his ledger tightened. His upper body shook with the effort to maintain his composure.</p><p>
  <em>One. Day.</em>
</p><p>He and Kitsuragi had <em>both </em>staked their professional reputations—not to mention their sanity—on some insane scrap of faith in Harry’s ability to get his shit together, and the shitkid had gone and blown his last chance in less than <em>one goddamn day.</em></p><p>Torson and McLaine were a couple of fucking idiots, but even broken clocks were right twice a day. Something was <em>wrong </em>here. He could feel it. </p><p>Judit gently squeezed Jean’s arm, snapping him out of his furious reverie. His grip on his ledger loosened slightly, allowing her to slide it out of his hands and deposit it safely on the edge of his desk.</p><p>“Breathe, Vic,” she murmured. “He used to go outside and pace sometimes, remember? Don’t go looking for trouble.”</p><p>Jean nodded and exhaled slowly. “Fine, fine,” he conceded, “but I’m still going to talk to him.” <em>Assuming I can fucking </em>find <em>him, </em>he didn’t add.  </p><p>“I’ll come with you.” Judit flashed an encouraging smile and let go of his arm.</p><p>In response, Jean leaned over, flipped his ledger open to that morning’s entry, and pointedly slid it onto Judit’s desk. “Thank you, but that won’t be necessary.”</p><p>Judit opened her mouth to protest and Jean immediately cut her off. He needed to confront Harry <em>quickly, </em>before the situation spiraled any further out of control, and he needed to do it <em>alone. </em>“I’d much rather you stay here,” he directed, his tone short and clipped, “and get started on our report from this morning’s shitshow.”</p><p>“Jean—”</p><p>“That’s an <em>order,”</em> he snapped. He turned on his heel in preparation to retreat, but not before he caught the flicker of hurt in Judit’s eyes. He paused, just for a second, but…</p><p>No, no, the situation with Harry <em>had </em>to take precedence. He didn’t have a choice.</p><p>He kept walking.</p><p><em>Yeah, sure, pull rank on your friends, </em>taunted his insufferable bastard of a conscience as he stormed out of C-wing and made a beeline for the main stairwell. <em>You remember how well that strategy worked for the shitkid, don’t you? </em></p><p>Jean banished that thought as quickly as it had come. This was different. He wasn’t trying to cover up a disaster; he was trying to <em>prevent</em> one.</p><p>… and he’d make it up to Judit later. Or at least, he’d try to.</p><p>By the time Jean reached the ground floor lobby, he had a plan. Harry couldn’t have gone far, especially on foot. He’d start by checking the underpass near the on-ramp to the 8/81. From there, he could take a shortcut to Harry’s favorite local bar, and then he’d try the 24-hour video rental place on Voyager…</p><p>Jaw set with determination, Jean barged through the station’s heavy double doors and surveyed his surroundings as if he was assessing a crime scene. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, exactly, but what he found stopped him dead in his tracks.</p><p>At the far end of the small, patchy slice of lawn outside the station’s main entrance sat a rickety wooden picnic table—a half-rotten, unstable vestige of a long since failed attempt to create a “community space” on the property. A lone figure was seated on the least flimsy bench with his elbows propped up on the table, contentedly nibbling on a large sandwich and observing his surroundings with interest.</p><p>Slowly, Jean let his gaze travel from the man’s bright, alert expression to his neatly trimmed facial hair, down to his surprisingly steady hands, then back up to his broad shoulders.</p><p>Even from a distance, it was easy to see that his Perseus Black dress uniform was clean and pressed, and for the first time in years, the stiff, dark fabric seemed to flatter his large frame instead of straining to contain it.</p><p>Jean blinked a couple of times, just to make sure his eyes weren’t playing a cruel trick on him.</p><p>The seated figure hardly resembled the filthy, bleeding shell of a man he’d dragged out of Martinaise. Instead, he bore more than a passing resemblance to the version of Harry that Jean still saw in his mind’s eye when he allowed himself to reminisce about the early days of their partnership—the ghost of a younger man he’d never been able to properly mourn.</p><p>He felt suddenly, acutely self-conscious as he glanced down at his own rumpled uniform that he’d salvaged from the top of his laundry hamper in the wee hours of the morning. He also didn’t need a mirror to know that yesterday’s five o’clock shadow had officially lingered for too long to pass as a deliberate style choice.</p><p><em>It’s not too late,</em> whispered a tiny voice in the back of Jean’s mind. <em>Just turn around, go back inside, apologize to—</em></p><p>Naturally, Harry chose that exact moment to glance in Jean’s direction, almost as if he’d sensed that he was being watched. He met his former partner’s gaze with a pained look of recognition and a distinctly guilty-looking grimace.</p><p>That was all it took to send Jean’s earlier anger and apprehension rushing back to the forefront of his consciousness. He plastered on his best witness placating smile and made his way over to the sad little picnic table, determined to get to the bottom of… whatever this was. </p><p>“Hi, Sat—er, Sergeant,” Harry greeted cautiously as Jean approached. “Am I allowed to eat here? Kim said we can take half an hour for lunch, but he couldn’t eat with me and I saw there’s a table out here, so I thought it’d be nice to…” He flashed an awkward smile, eerily reminiscent of The Expression, and gestured towards his lunch spread.</p><p>“It’s fine, Harry,” Jean muttered. He’d had every intention of getting straight to the point, but his former partner’s stiff, overly formal greeting had caught him off guard.</p><p>Deep down, he knew he’d brought that on himself when he’d demanded that Harry address him only by his title, back in Martinaise, but he still hadn’t gotten used to the change that had only become official as of that morning. He was also more than a little annoyed that Harry seemed so eager to embrace it, seeing as Jean’s demotion was technically his fucking fault.</p><p>The Captain had told him not to take it personally—that C-wing simply didn’t need three lieutenants—but Jean knew there was more to it than that.</p><p>This was his punishment for failing to get Harry under control. His luck had finally run out.</p><p>Jean rested his hip against the edge of the picnic table and crossed his arms across his chest. “Don’t let me interrupt your little picnic,” he started again, allowing a slight edge to creep into his tone. “I just wanted to check in.” He narrowed his eyes. “Anything <em>interesting </em>happen this morning?”</p><p>Harry took a bite of his sandwich, chewed thoughtfully, and shook his head. “Not really. Kim and I mostly drove around Central Jamrock so I could, you know, get the lay of the land.”</p><p>Jean just barely managed to suppress the urge to roll his eyes. <em>What a brilliant idea</em>, he mentally snarked. <em>Who better to show Harry around his own goddamn precinct than some guy who’s lived here for a fucking month?</em></p><p>When Jean didn’t respond, Harry began ticking off notable events on his fingers. “We told some kids to stop playing in the street, removed some offensive graffito, escorted an angry lady out of a Frittte—Oh!” His expression brightened. “We also caught a guy trying to hotwire a motor carriage and issued a station call. Kim said I even cited the right statute! All that studying really paid off, huh?”</p><p>Harry’s entirely unsubtle approval-seeking behavior was nothing if not familiar, but the new, genuine earnestness behind it made Jean’s heart ache. He swallowed the lump in his throat and nodded.</p><p>As expected, Harry glowed in response to the unspoken praise and proceeded to take a large, especially triumphant bite out of his sandwich.</p><p>Jean un-crossed his arms and tapped his foot to vent some nervous energy until Harry finished chewing, at which point he asked the only logical follow-up question that came to mind.</p><p>“Have you filed your copy of the form?”</p><p>In an instant, Harry’s beaming smile disappeared, only to be replaced by his earlier guilty expression. “I, uh… not yet,” he stammered, “but I was going to do it as soon as I finished lunch, I swear!” He grabbed his brand-new ledger from the bench next to him and frantically rifled through it until he produced a single sheet of pink carbon paper.</p><p>“I was gonna ask Kim to look over it again to make sure I filled it out right, but, uh… here.” Harry shoved the form into Jean’s closest hand and held his breath, as if he was bracing himself for a reprimand.</p><p>Jean glanced at the form. Sobriety had done very little to improve Harry’s handwriting, but every field seemed to have been completed properly, including the initials in the “partner/witness” box—two matching letters, perfectly smooth even on the carbon copy, because clearly <em>some </em>people thought they were too special to use regular ballpoint pens…</p><p>“This won’t happen again,” Harry reassured Jean, eyes wide with something approaching fear. “I promise.” Another moment passed before Harry hesitantly held up a hand, pinky extended. Jean pointedly ignored it.</p><p>“Yes, well…” He skimmed over the form once more and cleared his throat. “Everything seems to be in order here.” He folded the paper in half and tucked it into his jacket pocket. “I’ll take care of this later. Good job, Harry.”</p><p>The sheer relief that washed across Harry’s face sent a wave of nausea rolling through Jean’s nearly empty stomach. As much as he’d fucking <em>despised</em> Harry’s whole “Detective God” routine, it was infinitely more disturbing to watch his former partner cower before him—a subordinate officer, now more than ever—and desperately try to prove his competence at the most basic tasks of policing.</p><p>At this rate, it was only a matter of time before Harry’s shiny new inferiority complex got someone killed—most likely himself. </p><p>And Jean would have only himself to blame.</p><p>“Do you have any other questions?” Harry asked, through another mouthful of sandwich. “I can tell you anything you want to know. Or Kim can, if I can’t. He took lots of notes while we were out. He always does that, though. He uses his notebook like most people use their brains. Or maybe most people use notebooks and I’m the only one who talks to myself <em>inside</em> my brain?”</p><p>Harry shut up for just long enough to draw in a breath before continuing, “I might be a <em>little</em> biased, but I think my method has lots of advantages. Less stuff to carry around, you know, and I can solve cases in the shower or in the dark or...” He cut himself off with a gasp. “Ooh<em>,</em> I wonder what would happen if Kim ever lost his notebook. That would be… fuck, he’s got his whole <em>life </em>in there!”</p><p>Harry tilted his head and furrowed his eyebrows, visibly perplexed by this hypothetical scenario that he’d conjured up out of thin air.</p><p>Meanwhile, Jean could only stare as his own (entirely internal) thought processes sprinted to catch up with Harry’s long-winded tangent. He also couldn’t help but wonder, for the umpteenth time since the debacle in Martinaise, how the hell Harry got away with calling Kitsuragi by his first name. Was he just that oblivious to the lieutenant’s preference for formality, or…?</p><p>“That would never happen, though,” Harry declared with confidence, having apparently concluded his latest unnecessarily dramatic thought project. “Kim’s <em>super </em>organized. I don’t think he’s <em>ever</em> lost anything, or at least, not anything important<em>. </em>His apartment is like a—”</p><p>Something deep inside of Jean finally snapped. “And where is <em>Lieutenant Kitsuragi </em>right now, Harry?”</p><p>“Meeting with the Captain.” Harry tugged at the knot of his uncharacteristically sensible tie and chuckled nervously.</p><p>“About?”</p><p>“Me, I guess?” Harry shrugged, but his bouncing right leg and the sudden tension in his features continued to betray his anxiety. “It was already on the schedule this morning and I wasn’t invited.”</p><p>Jean nodded once and schooled his own expression into a blank mask, even as Harry’s shoulders slumped and his eyes glazed over into the familiar thousand-yard stare that indicated he was engaging in one of his infamous ‘brain conferences.’ Judging by the utterly dejected look on Harry’s face, his inner voices were <em>not </em>being kind to him.</p><p>After a brief deliberation, Jean allowed himself to act on the tiny twinge of sympathy that had wormed its way into his gut.</p><p>“It sounds like you had a productive morning,” he said, carefully keeping his tone neutral. “I trust… that your partner will put in a good word for you.”</p><p>He hated to encourage Harry’s painfully obvious hero-worship, but at least in the short term, it felt like it was worth the sacrifice to snap Harry out of his self-deprecating trance. He returned his ex-partner’s grateful smile with a tiny one of his own.</p><p>It really was a huge relief, after everything, to see that aside from his supposed sobriety and missing memories and the obvious hit to his confidence—<em>your fault,</em> Jean’s conscience reminded him—Harry was still more or less himself.</p><p>Jean knew to keep his expectations low, but he’d made up his mind: He wanted to get to know this new Harry. He wanted to undo the damage he’d done in Martinaise and help Harry become the best version of himself, even if it killed him to watch “Kim” reap all the benefits.</p><p>He just wasn’t sure where to start.</p><p><em>You could try ditching the intimidation stance and sitting the fuck down like a normal person, </em>suggested his inner voice. He acquiesced with a barely audible sigh.</p><p>The half-rotten bench groaned as Jean settled down a good half-meter away from Harry with his legs on the outside, just in case.</p><p><em>Just in case of </em>what?</p><p>He leaned back against the edge of the table, propped himself up with one elbow, and glanced at the bright blue sandwich wrapper that Harry appeared to be using as both a plate and a napkin.</p><p>“LeGrand’s, huh?” he remarked casually. It seemed as good a conversation starter as any.</p><p>Harry swallowed his last bite of his sandwich and grinned. “Yeah! Kim says it’s his favorite sandwich place in Jamrock. He’s been talking about it for weeks and he said we <em>had </em>to stop there. The owner even greeted me by name when we walked in. She seemed kind of surprised to see me, actually, but she said I could come back anytime.” His smile widened. “I think this could become a regular <em>thing,</em> you know?”</p><p>And just like that, the balloon of hope in Jean’s chest deflated and spluttered into the abyss.</p><p>He did his best to contort his facial muscles into a passable approximation of a smile, but his best wasn’t enough.</p><p>It was never enough.</p><p>“Did we eat there?” Harry asked, after a long, awkward silence. “When we were partners?”</p><p>Jean shrugged. “Sometimes.”</p><p>Harry stared at him, clearly expecting him to go on, but Jean left it at that.</p><p>There was no point, he decided, in telling Harry that their weekly pilgrimage to LeGrand’s had been the highlight of their partnership, at least until the other regulars had started to comment on Harry’s habit of emptying his flask into his soft drink cup when he thought Jean wasn’t looking.</p><p>Harry hadn’t even noticed when Jean had started packing a lunch on Wednesdays, all those years ago. He hadn’t cared then, so why would he care now? At best, the truth would hardly register, given the absence of context to make it meaningful or memorable. At worst, it might send Harry into another death spiral.</p><p>It wasn’t worth the risk. None of this was worth the risk.</p><p>Before Jean managed to string together a sentence to politely excuse himself, Harry shifted uncomfortably in his seat, stuck his hand into his jacket, and withdrew a familiar silver pill box. Its contents rattled softly as Harry popped it open with practiced ease and deftly slipped something into his opposite hand, just out of Jean’s line of sight.</p><p>Jean’s palms started to sweat. His jacket felt too warm, all of a sudden; the belt around his midsection felt like it was squeezing the air out of his lungs, but he couldn’t bring himself to loosen it. He could only watch in horror as Harry popped a mysterious white tablet into his mouth, swallowed it dry, and then began to fold his empty sandwich wrapper into a neat square, as if absolutely nothing of note had just taken place.</p><p>A minute or two later, Harry stretched and let out a contented sigh. “Back to work,” he declared, with an artificial cheeriness that chilled Jean to the bone. Harry looked up from the table with a small smile on his face, which quickly gave way to an expression of alarm.</p><p>“Sergeant, are you alright?”</p><p>Jean drew in a shaky breath and gestured towards the silver box that was still resting on the table, out in plain sight, <em>taunting</em> him.</p><p>Harry’s brow momentarily creased with confusion… and then went slack as his face began to flush with shame.</p><p>“It’s just… it’s paracetamol,” he said in an impossibly small voice. “You know, for my…” He glanced down at his lap and gently rubbed his left thigh.</p><p>
  <em>Fuck.</em>
</p><p>“Yeah, well… that shit’s fucking <em>terrible</em> for your liver,” Jean stammered, in a pathetic, futile effort to backtrack. “What kind of idiot doctor would prescribe that to a… to a goddamn…”</p><p>He heard the telltale sniffle before he’d even finished speaking. He didn’t have to look at Harry to know that his lower lip was trembling, and it was only a matter of time before he hit him with those pitiful puppy dog eyes…</p><p><em>Nothing’s changed.</em> The realization hit Jean like a ton of bricks and sent him scrambling to his feet. <em>He’s playing the victim, just like he always does.</em></p><p>He swallowed a parting shot—<em>"I wouldn’t push my fucking luck if I were you, shitkid”—</em>and took off towards the station without a backwards glance.</p><p><em>I am not the bad guy here, </em>he attempted to reassure himself, even as his heart threatened to pound its way out of his chest. <em>He’s an amnesiac, not a fucking imbecile. He </em>had <em>to know what that looked like. </em>His lungs felt like they were going to explode. He was running out of time.</p><p>
  <em>I can’t fix this.</em>
</p><p>Jean’s murderous scowl sent a crowd of junior officers scattering as he stumbled through the lobby and turned down the closest hallway. He grabbed the handle of the first door he encountered and nearly wept with relief when it swung open, welcoming him into the dark, damp embrace of an empty supply closet.   </p><p>He collapsed against the inside of the door and fished a red-capped bottle out of his too-tight, too-warm jacket. Two grey capsules burned his throat as he choked them down dry.</p><p>And then all he could do was wait, alone with his thoughts, for as long as it took for the magnesium to take effect.</p><p>
  <em>He hasn’t changed. It never ends. There’s no fucking way he didn’t know what that looked like. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>…</em>
</p><p>
  <em>He doesn’t remember.</em>
</p>
<hr/><p>Far too many excruciatingly long hours later, Jean found himself alone once again, this time surrounded by rows of idle machines, scuffed leather mats, and half-rusted, half-empty weight racks. Too-bright fluorescent lights flickered overhead as he peeled himself off of a grimy leather bench and let out a grunt of satisfaction.</p><p>He’d managed to work up a good sweat during his much-needed break, and even more importantly, he hadn’t had to see, interact with, or think about anyone besides himself for a full, glorious hour. He was back in control, at least for the time being, and he felt… not great, not good, but… <em>better.</em> Marginally.</p><p>That had to count for something.</p><p>There was a certain irony, Jean supposed, as he rose to his feet, in the fact that his former partner had been the one to let him in on this well-kept secret—that hardly anyone used the precinct’s shitty little basement gym during the first night shift, save for a handful of new recruits who had yet to succumb to less savory vices.</p><p>Of all the gifts Harry had given him in the early days of their partnership, that tip was arguably the one he treasured most.</p><p>It was also one of only a precious few that Harry hadn’t been able to steal back and pawn for drug money.</p><p>Methodically, Jean racked his last set of dumbbells, stretched, and then moved to wipe down his equipment. The familiar, mindless routine typically grounded him, but on this particular evening, some bitter, masochistic part of him simply couldn’t help but wonder if the rest of the Major Crimes Unit was <em>still </em>upstairs, shooting the shit like a bunch of old friends catching up a bar.</p><p>Jean scowled at the memory. Nevermind their escaped suspect or the tactical team’s failed narcotics raid or the <em>mountains</em> of case files on all of their desks—it was far more important, apparently, that everyone gather around and listen to Special Consultant Windbag answer Harry’s never-ending, inexplicably enthusiastic barrage of questions about <em>Revolutionary aerostatic brigades, </em>of all fucking things.</p><p>As if it hadn’t been disheartening enough to watch consummate professional Kitsuragi close his stupid blue notebook and pull up a chair right alongside his less disciplined colleagues, his own partner had then proceeded to stab him in the back without a hint of remorse.</p><p>“We’ve all had a long day,” Judit had mumbled dismissively when Jean had expressed his intention to call everyone back to work. “And honestly, I think it’s nice. I’m glad Kim and Trant are making Harry feel welcome.”</p><p>She could have just said “go fuck yourself,” but that wasn’t her style. She was too goddamn polite for that.</p><p>In the end, Jean hadn’t said a word when Judit had switched off her desk lamp and rolled her chair across the room to join the trivia circle. He doubted that anyone had noticed when he’d left his own desk a few minutes later, but then again, perhaps that was just as well.</p><p>The last thing he wanted was for someone to get curious about his whereabouts and ruin his last oasis of solitude with more chatter and laughter and <em>bullshit. </em></p><p>Jean threw his towel over his shoulder and glanced at the ancient clock mounted above the doorway. It was getting late, but just as he’d planned, he had plenty of time to rinse off in peace before the next shift change.</p><p>The long, dimly lit hallway between the gym and the locker room was blessedly empty, but oddly, it wasn’t as silent as usual. Jean could just barely make out a muffled, repetitive rumbling noise somewhere in the distance.</p><p>Its volume increased slightly with each step Jean took towards the locker room, in perfect tandem with his sense of dread.</p><p>He arrived at his locker just in time to catch the last couple notes of some unfamiliar, vulgar rock song and its subsequent fadeout into a cacophony of canned racing sound effects—squealing tires, screeching metal, and even a fucking police siren. The whole headache-inducing racket was surprisingly quiet, especially by locker room standards, which meant Jean could easily make out the sound of running water from the nearby shower block.</p><p><em>Fuck.</em> He had company. Most likely a lone junior officer, judging by their shit music taste and the lack of conversation spilling from around the corner.</p><p><em>Great, </em>Jean silently seethed as he kicked off his shoes and yanked his sweaty t-shirt off over his head. <em>Wonderful. Absolutely fucking peachy.</em></p><p>He swapped out his gym towel for a clean one, slammed his locker door shut, and marched towards the showers with his shoulders squared for a fight.</p><p>The first thing he discovered when he rounded the corner was that the intruder had claimed the only shower stall that wasn’t either broken or coated with a generous layer of orange slime mold—because of-fucking-course they had. The infernal radio was perched on its usual bench, with the speakers pointed towards the wall for maximum reverb.</p><p>Without hesitation, Jean grabbed the volume knob and twisted it down to zero.</p><p>“Goddamn juvenile delinquent station,” he muttered, just to make sure the bastard was aware of his displeasure.</p><p>A familiar voice was quick to respond from the occupied shower. “Khm. Someone must have left that on.”</p><p>
  <em>Oh, you have got to be fucking kidding me. </em>
</p><p>Jean wrung his towel like he was snapping a neck and reflexively snarled, “Don’t you ever fucking <em>go home?”</em></p><p>“I could ask you the same,” came the immediate retort, with only the slightest hint of indignation.</p><p>The water cut off abruptly, sending Jean’s fight or flight instinct into high gear. He didn’t have time to make a decision before the absolute <em>last</em> person he wanted to see stepped out of the shower stall, clad only in a ratty green bath towel and a pair of almost comically oversized, bright orange shower shoes.</p><p>Somehow, even half-naked and dripping wet, Lieutenant Kitsuragi was an intimidating presence. Behind his partially fogged-up glasses, his face was an unreadable mask of composure.</p><p>If he noticed the way Jean instinctively scanned his bare torso for any sign of fresh, Harry-shaped injuries, he didn’t let on. Instead, he glanced around the tiled room and mildly remarked, “There are three other showers,” as if he could not <em>possibly </em>fathom why Jean was still standing in the middle of the doorway.</p><p>“What the hell are you doing here?” Jean ground out through clenched teeth.</p><p>A single eyebrow rose from behind a cloudy lens. “I work here.”</p><p>Jean shoved his towel under one arm and pinched the bridge of his nose. “But you’re not…” The eyebrow arched a little higher. “You didn’t use the gym,” he finished lamely.</p><p>“Very astute observation, officer.”</p><p>A moment passed in tense silence, and then the lieutenant hiked his own towel up a little higher on his hips and sighed. “The water heater at my new apartment has been broken since I moved in,” he confessed. “I’ve been showering at Harry’s most nights, but I’m not sure that solution is sustainable now that we are working together again. I’m exploring potential alternatives.”</p><p>He sounded almost apologetic, though it was impossible to tell if he understood exactly what he had done wrong.</p><p>He almost certainly didn’t, but nevertheless, his honesty was disarming. In that moment, Jean realized how unbelievably <em>stupid</em> he must look, trying to pick a fight with a man ten years his senior and half his size over a radio station and a goddamn shower stall.</p><p>He unclenched his teeth, loosened his death grip on his towel, and let his body sag against the cool tile doorframe as all his pent-up rage and adrenaline slowly evaporated, leaving only familiar, mind-numbing exhaustion to take its place.</p><p>When Jean’s head rolled to the side to escape Kitsuragi’s piercing gaze, he unwittingly caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror spanning the adjacent wall. He found that he hardly recognized the pale, sunken, scraggly face that stared vacantly back at him.</p><p>He looked like absolute shit.</p><p>He <em>felt </em>like absolute shit.</p><p>That was no wonder, really. When was the last time he’d consumed anything more substantial than coffee? Yesterday? The day before? He vaguely recalled that Judit had left something on his desk earlier that evening, carefully wrapped in a napkin to make sure it stayed fresh.</p><p>Had he ever gotten around to eating it? He wasn’t sure.</p><p>And for that matter, what was the maximum recommended dosage of magnesium pills? Whatever it was, he’d almost definitely exceeded it. He was going to have a fucking heart attack before he hit 35 if he kept that up.</p><p>That thought didn’t scare him nearly as much as he knew it should.</p><p><em>You’re no better than Harry, </em>taunted the smug little voice in his head that sounded suspiciously like his father. <em>Remember how Harry made you feel? That’s what you are to everyone else. </em></p><p>
  <em>A burden. A burnout.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>A liability.</em>
</p><p>A sharp cough cut through Jean’s self-loathing fugue, forcing him to shift his attention back to the present. He blinked a couple of times to re-orient himself and then used the last of his strength to turn away from the ghost in the mirror.</p><p>Upon doing so, he discovered that Kitsuragi had closed some of the distance between them and was watching him from a couple meters away with an expression of mild annoyance, or perhaps accusation, etched into his features.</p><p>“Officer, could you please—”</p><p>“I fucked up,” Jean whispered, either unwilling or unable to register that the other man was already speaking. The words echoed off the tiles, inappropriate and mocking and amplified for the entire world to hear. He had to close his eyes until his vision stopped swimming.</p><p>When he opened them, he found the lieutenant staring back at him with considerably more concern than before. “I was going to ask you to step out of the doorway,” he said, after a short pause. When Jean didn’t move, he heaved a deep sigh of resignation and added, “… but yes, I am aware that something happened this afternoon. I must admit I’m a little… hazy on the details.”</p><p>Somehow, Jean mustered up enough energy to shrug his shoulders and cross his arms.</p><p>Part of him suspected that Kitsuragi was bluffing, just to try to catch him in a lie, but he had no way of knowing for sure anymore. The <em>old</em> Harry would have gone crying to his partner in a heartbeat, desperate to share his sob story with literally anyone who would show him even a modicum of sympathy, but <em>now</em>…</p><p>Now, Jean didn’t know what to think.</p><p>“It was just a minor misunderstanding,” he muttered.</p><p>“Hmm. I see.” The lieutenant pursed his lips and studied Jean’s face for a long moment before he went in for the kill. “So minor that it caused you to have a panic attack in the middle of a workday?”</p><p>Prickly heat crept up the back of Jean’s neck. His chest started to tighten.</p><p>How the <em>fuck</em> did Kitsuragi know about that?</p><p>He’d thought he’d been careful… he’d always been so careful…</p><p>Jean’s hands fell to his sides, sending his towel tumbling to the damp, filthy floor. He moved to shove his hands into his pockets, only to remember just a second too late that he was still wearing gym shorts.</p><p>
  <em>There’s nowhere to hide.</em>
</p><p>He knew, rationally, that he was the one who had Kitsuragi cornered, not the other way around, but he felt so painfully exposed that he couldn’t bring himself to move. It didn’t help that the lieutenant was still staring at him like he could see right through him.</p><p>“Detective.” Kitsuragi cleared his throat and shifted his weight from one foot the other without quite making eye contact. “I wasn’t planning to have this conversation tonight, but… I have been meaning to apologize. I should not have pushed you to talk to Harry. It wasn’t my place.”</p><p>He dropped his gaze and began to clean his glasses on the loose edge of his towel, presumably to spare Jean—or perhaps himself—from any further discomfort.</p><p>It took a beat or two for the lieutenant’s words to fully sink in. Jean’s first reaction was to grind his teeth in anger; he <em>deeply</em> resented the condescending implication that he hadn’t approached Harry on his own volition, or that he would have cruelly abandoned his ex-partner if not for <em>His Innocence </em>Kim Kitsuragi’s selfless, heroic intervention.</p><p>However, he couldn’t find it within himself to reject any excuse, no matter how insulting, to externalize some of his own self-blame and buy himself enough time to escape before he completely broke down.</p><p>He couldn’t let that happen. Not here. He’d become the new laughingstock of the precinct… he’d be ruined… Gottlieb would tell the Captain <em>everything…</em></p><p>Jean tried to acknowledge the lieutenant’s apology, but after several agonizing false starts, all he managed to say for himself was, “I wanted to give him another chance.”</p><p>“Okay.” Kitsuragi nodded and took a couple steps closer. Jean could hardly hear him over the sound of blood rushing in his ears. “Okay,” he repeated, in a slow, measured tone, “but these things can take time. That’s alright. He’s not going anywhere.”</p><p>He uttered those words with a confidence that Jean would never have taken seriously in a thousand years, had he not just seen Harry with his own two eyes, two months sober and actually <em>trying </em>for the first time since at least ’48.</p><p>The lieutenant looked like he wanted to say something else, but the approaching cacophony of raucous chatter and heavy footsteps signaled that they were out of time. Jean nearly tripped over his discarded towel in his haste to shuffle out of the doorway and let the other man escape.</p><p>Kitsuragi’s parting words were firm, but not unkind. “Go home, detective.”</p><p>By some miracle, Jean successfully hauled his heavy body into the recently vacated shower just as the first wave of shift change chaos descended upon the locker room.</p><p>He turned the water on full blast without bothering to strip and rested his forehead against the cool, slimy tile wall for support as he slowly collapsed in on himself. He stood there, motionless and numb, until long after the shower ran cold.</p><p>When he finally shut off the water and turned around to leave, some untold amount of time later, he found a clean, dry bath towel hanging on the hook next to the curtain.</p>
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